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Fun facts: Kim's OBP as a shortstop places him 11th out of 27 on this list. MLB average OBP during in the league since 2021 is .315. Kim's career OBP of .326 exceeds this. Kim's OBP the past two years is .351 and .330, so his trend is up, not down. Kim has already had seasons of 4.9 in 2022 and 5.8 in 2023, and his 2.6 bWAR last year during a season in which he was injured for 40 games is still (checks Tigers 2024 page to make sure) higher than any shortstop we currently have in the system. Signing Ha-Seong Kim to the one- or two-year deal he is projected to receive will not be enough to prevent us from signing Juan Soto. Counterpoint: Trey Sweeney's WAR in 2024 of 0.7 in 36 games and 119 PA is roughly the same WAR rate Kim's 2.6 was for 121 games and 470 PA. The $64 question at hand is, do we want to post up with Trey Sweeney for 2025 without undertaking any serious efforts to see whether we can obtain a more established, more predictable shortstop in the short term instead?

Trade chip, sure. That could make sense in certain circumstances—for instance, we've signed Alex Bregman, or otherwise acquired an experienced everyday third baseman. But it seems too many fans, including here, want to rush Jace Jung out of town through trade, as though that should be a priority this year, because some version of "he sucks". But think about it: he may be #5 prospect and that may make him sound attractive as a trade chip, but if Harris were shopping Jung around the league while it's known that we do not have an established player to take third base in his place, wouldn't that look like a red flag about Jung to potential trade partners?

I'm not convinced of that. I can't imagine the Kochs would not also personally benefit from a regime of zero regulation of financial instruments, same as the other billionaires. they certainly have the wherewithal to fund very strict control of their end of it in such a way that they would only win and never lose. If you can specify exactly why they would not, I'd be interested in hearing that.

Inept clueless imbeciles is only part of the story. Another part is embezzlement by corrupt actors on the inside. People tend to think everyone inside the government is inept or corrupt, but that's not true. The vast, vast majority of people who work for government are good, honest people who truly want to make a difference for the American people. It's just that stories of ineptitude and corruption are so pervasive in relation to their incidence, and the damage they do can be so vast, that it leads people to conclude the entire government is cooked. And that's why we have a high percentage of people who simply want to destroy it, and an entire political party whose power emanates from grooming those people.

I'm not a fan of soft rock or yacht rock or whatever people want to call it, but I ran across this documentary series in a newsletter, and if you thought the Max doc was fantastic, the guy who puts out the newsletter thinks this is much better: https://www.allyourscreens.com/reviews/2940-review-sometimes-when-we-touch-the-reign-ruin-resurrection-of-soft-rock Mainly because there apparently are some huge revelations, including this one about Toni Tennille: But the most jarring stories come from Toni Tennille, who fronted the massively successful duo The Captain and Tennille with husband Daryl Dragon. While they looked like the perfect couple from the outside, it was far from an idyllic marriage. In her segment, Tennille admits that he never told her that he loved her. "It was hard," she says. "The first few years I kept hoping. Hoping that there would be a breakthrough or something. I always thought Daryl was a genius. He was an odd duck, boy. But he was a genius. Maybe it was some form of autism. I don't know. I never understood it." "I couldn't make him fall in love with me," she continued. "I hoped he would. But as the years went by, I realized that he was not capable of that. And then I was kind of stuck. I just went along with it. I know he admired me tremendously. He admired my talent, my voice, my gift for writing. He was just closed up and he couldn't open up to any kind of emotion." "I was kind of a hot dish in those days," she explained. "But throughout that entire relationship with Daryl, I never, ever cheated on him. I never had an affair. He was the only man that interested me. And even though I couldn't have him the way I wanted him, when I would have dreams, erotic dreams, he was the guy in the dreams. That loveless marriage inspired one of the duo's biggest hits and it's impossible to hear "The Way I Want To Touch You" the same way after knowing the backstory of the tune. "I never wanted to love a man/the way that I want to love you." "It was our second hit and I wanted to express how I felt about Daryl. He was everything to me," she explains. "This was early on, when I still thought I could get through to him. But I was never able to. And I kept thinking. 'Why are you doing this? Why are you still with him?' I kept worrying about all of our fans. So that's why I stuck with him."

It might be tough to get anyone good if you're willing to part with McGonigle OR Rainer. I do notice you seem willing to part with Jung. If so, I would find that interesting because he is still ranked #5 in the system by Pipeline ahead of Briceno and Liranzo, who are both big flavors this month. I don't know were Fangraphs will have him but I wouldn't doubt it would be as high as #5 with them, too. It's just interesting because we broke the seal on the guy and he didn't play like Rookie of the Year, so a lot of people here—not meaning you in particular, but a lot—seem ready to kick him to the curb for next to nothing. I'm not saying I want to keep him, necessarily—only that I find it interesting so many fans are already done with him, a guy who still appears to have a bright future in baseball..

I do think Harris will trade from a surplus of prospects to get the kind of major league pieces that will fill holes on the team, but I do not expect him to do anything like trade Kevin McGonigle and Jaden Hamm for Dylan Cease come July.

My initial impression is that Scott Harris is the anti-Dombrowski. I don't think that's at all bad. EDIT: And all I had to do is look down just one post. 😁

That's why they worked so hard to get someone they own in power.

I'm pretty sure they don't see it that way at all. Probably the opposite: without a sheriff in town, that makes it much easier for the Trump people to game the market to enrich themselves by ripping off the remaining 99%, only this time it will be legal for them to do it instead of illegal. They can probably get away with that now, only after they deep six the deep state, they won't have to waste any of their money on stupid **** like Compliance.

Lost in the outrage: FBI and Securities Exchange Commission completely eliminated on this graph. And, of course, in the big $7 trillion scheme of things, they cost practically zero. That would put Leon and Vivek and their Trumpy criminal ilk in the clear for decades at least. That was always the real point of this whole exercise. Saving taxpayer money lol

Any play involving Willie Horton is aces in my book.

Sure, when he's not dropping easy fly ball.

Even over the Bombers?

I’m can see why the reaction to this would be a little more subdued. It was pretty much 98% Bates was gonna hit it. The really big play was the fourth and inches.

I don't think I would want to make the decision today to rely on either to be what we need two or three years from now, which is a key reason you want to sign a guy to a long-term deal in the first place.

I offended my brother during the game by mentioning toward the end that we were playing like the SOLs on defense. He retorted that the SOLs are dead, and of course he's right. They are dead. But I didn't say these were the SOLs. I said we were playing like the SOLs, by which I meant, a lot of second- and third-stringers—guys who would have been every game starters on the SOLs—on the field doing the best they could against a good team at better strength than they. Sure, those backup guys are being coached up by a better crew than the SOLs ever had. But they still were leaving openings all over the field for the Packers' offense and, as backups, they didn't quite have the speed or field vision to make up for it—just like the SOLs did. However, these are decidedly not the SOLs, because even though the defense was decimated and scrambling, the top-flight Goffense was there to pick them up, in a way the SOL offense could have not have. And that, to me, is exactly why the actual SOLs are dead.

He goes in the direction he thinks the wind is blowing.

Yeah, remember this guy? I miss this guy.

I’ve been repeatedly assured that Tulsi has nothing to do with Russia. Never heard of them, in fact.

He’s a RINO backslider, and she’s his emotional hostage. Mainline conservatives can say what they want about RINOs being on the side of good and all, but when it becomes clear that the curtain is descending on liberal democracy and the opposition still in office can no longer effectively challenge it, RINOS aren’t still siding with Democrats at that point. At best, they’re laying low and keeping their powder dry. More likely, they were never committed to the cause in the first place. I am not calling you a RINO, BTW. I view Never-Trumper conservatives as a bit of a different breed.

You look at ballpark factors for RHH over at Savant and even though it’s 98 overall, which reads as average, we still rank 22nd among all ballparks. And our RHH home run factor, which is what I assume income- and legacy-seeking sluggers care most about, is 88 which ranks 23rd. So, I agree, tough sell. I’ve been noodling the idea of moving the LF fences in five or ten feet. Left-handed pitchers we desperately want to extend wouldn’t love that, but how would that play to right-handed sluggers?

I’m not sure they’ll get that last one past the union.

No way Sacramento taxpayers could be made to foot any bills.